I love clothes. I’m not really interested in make-up (I figured that would happen when I grew up but….) or shoes or purses. But clothes. Oh, how I love buying fun, colorful outfits.

I buy most of my clothes online, and I pride myself on finding amazing deals at places like Target, NewChic and Zulily.  Once in a great while, I’ll stop into one of the many dress stores in the area when something strikes my fancy and make a purchase. Well, until about two years ago. A dress company actually came to the Yishuv and had a sale in someone’s house. How easy! How convenient! Yes, indeed, until you think about the result of this easy/convenient decision. I bought an extremely colorful outfit and was excited to wear it…until I was sitting in shul that week and heard chuckles down the aisle. As I turned to my left, I saw that I wasn’t the only one who had thought the outfit was cute. My neighbor’s 9 year old daughter was donning it as well.

I’m not sure why it’s embarrassing to be wearing the same outfit as someone else, but it is. And somehow it’s even more embarrassing if they are a child, and not yours. This isn’t intentional matchy-tatchy, just a good way to get laughed at (and reminded of it for months afterwards).

I quickly ran home after shul that day, tore off the outfit and vowed never to buy something in the area again. There are too many chances that the outfit that I buy could also fall into the hands of a friend (or a friend’s daughter). And if I wore subtle, black clothing, that might not be so conspicuous or embarrassing, but that’s rarely the case with my wardrobe choices.

But then, I was in one of the neighborhood stores recently and a dress was calling my name. Against my better judgment, I couldn’t resist and I bought it. But this time I’m prepared. One of the things that caught my eye about this dress is that it’s reversible. How fun is that? I actually think that all of our clothes should be reversible. Wouldn’t that be great? Then every time that you buy something, you’d actually be buying two-somethings.

And that would ensure that you always had an escape plan, should you need it. If any cute 9 year old were to show up in the same outfit, I would just quickly go into the bathroom and flip it to the other side. Viola!

Dress designers should market their clothing in this way.

“Buy two for the price of one!”

“Have instant get-out-of-embarassing-situations-free with my dress design!”

Now, I’m well aware that we could still have a problem were two people around me to be wearing the dress on opposite sides.

But I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

For now, I’m considering a clothing revolution that starts with me and my new two-sided dress.